


A mountie walks into a pub

by KipDigress



Series: Coming to terms [3]
Category: Ashes to Ashes (UK TV), due South
Genre: A random visit, Gen, Humor, Perspectives, culture clash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-23
Updated: 2020-02-23
Packaged: 2021-02-28 03:40:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,591
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22867249
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KipDigress/pseuds/KipDigress
Summary: When a mountie turns at The Railway Arms in full dress uniform, Alex Drake is amused while Gene Hunt is somewhat less than impressed. But what he has to say has important implications for Gene finally resolving the troublesome relationship with his onetime D.I..This can be read completely independently of the other parts of the series.Rating due to language.
Relationships: Alex Drake/Gene Hunt
Series: Coming to terms [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1643671
Comments: 2
Kudos: 13





	A mountie walks into a pub

**Author's Note:**

> I couldn't resist the idea and therefore didn't desist.
> 
> A note on dates  
> The Canadian air date for the last Due South episodes was 14th March 1999, and, if I remember correctly, Sergeant Buck Frobisher's motivational speech refers explicitly to the 14th of March, but not to the year. For the purpose of this particular scene or incident, the gaps between various Due South series and episodes need to be reduced so that the last episode occurs on the 14th March **1998**. I hope this is not too much of a stretch or demand (the gaps between episodes seem unusually large in places: reduce the interval between series 2 and 3 to, say, 5 months, and adjust the intervals - they can still be pretty large - between the events at the end of series 3 so that series 3 ends sometime in the summer of 1997. Then series 4 can pick up in September 1997 and maintain its timeline, just a year ahead of when it aired. 
> 
> Sergeant Fraser's visit to The Railway Arms only works if it occurs **before** Alex and Gene have sorted themselves out, and, in this 'version', that means not too long after Gene arrives in June 1998. I think that if they had time to adopt or adapt to a status quo, it would not be a particularly happy one, and they would find it difficult to move beyond that.

It was a Friday night and, as they did nearly every Friday evening, they'd congregated at The Railway Arms, staking a claim to a large table in the saloon bar. Gene sat at one end with Alex on one side and Sam on the other; Ray sat next to Alex and Annie next to Sam. Chris lounged beside Ray with Shaz on his other side. Terry, Bammo, Cotsey, Piorot and whoever else wished to drop by filled up the remaining seats. Later they would rearrange themselves, as they split off into smaller groups, wandered away, swapped seats or moved to a round table for a few hands of poker. If poker, then Annie and Shaz were always left to themselves and usually Alex joined them, but she would occasionally play a few hands, if only because it irritated both Ray and Gene to find her holding her own with them, even to the whisky drinking.

They were relaxed, happy. The Railway Arms and the world beyond it didn't promote anger or moroseness. Even the time waiting for Gene had been peaceful for Alex; the ache of his absence never far away, but not crippling as she had feared. Sam and Annie were good company, and Ray became better company as he mellowed. It didn't harm that time worked differently within the pub, just as it had worked differently in Gene's world compared to the real world. Being able to effectively skip entire weeks might be disconcerting for all involved, but did have certain advantages.

Quiet fell in the public bar and the group suddenly became aware of the pitch of their own voices. They fell silent too.

"... a pub?"

Nelson said something unintelligible, although the soothing tone was clear.

"I mean is that all off-duty police officers do over here? Drink?"

Alex shot Gene a confused glance. The accent wasn't British, but the implication seemed to be that the visitor was, or had been, a police officer. Gene frowned and stood, pint in hand, and strolled over to the doorway to see what the fuss was all about. Despite his hand-signal for them all to stay put, Alex followed, ignoring Ray's warning look. She was curious, and the worst Gene would do was shout at her, and that was simply part and parcel of their relationship.

"Well, that's interesting," she remarked, standing next to Gene as he leant against the doorjamb and looking across the bar to where a lithe man with greying hair stood somewhat stiffly at the bar.

"Isn't it just. Full dress uniform. Never been one for formality myself." Gene shook his head at the bright red tunic and frowned at the yellow stripes on the black trousers. "Looks like a right poof."

"Oh, I don't know, although I do believe that uniform's ceremonial wear. Besides," she continued, "a suit and tie might be considered over dressed for chasing criminals. Never mind conducting interviews in a three piece suit, even without a bowtie. Any idea where he's from?" she asked, changing the topic when Gene gave her a disparaging look.

"Letters on the epaulette badge are G-R-C-R-C-M-P," Gene said, squinting to read the small letters across the pub.

"Canada then. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Colloquially known as 'mounties'."

"If you say so."

"I do. Their motto's 'Maintiens le Driot'."

"That's French."

"Yes, it is. Means: 'Uphold the law'."

"Sounds like one of us then. Well, he might be if he didn't dress up to be as obvious as humanly possible. He would stick out like a sore thumb on a stakeout," Gene grumbled.

"Shh. What's he saying?" Alex asked, seeing Nelson frown at what the mountie had said.

"No idea." The mountie had fallen into conversation with Nelson and others had resumed their talk.

"Uh-huh." Gene said after a while when Nelson gestured in their direction and the mountie turned towards them.

"You're in for it now," Alex said, voice amused as the mountie made his way towards them.

"Don't be too sure, Bolly, could be you he's coming over to see."

"Like you let anyone you've met since after nineteen eighty three talk to me without you being there."

"What can I say, Bolly?"

Alex was prevented from replying by the mountie reaching them. "Gene Hunt?"

"Detective Chief Inspector Hunt," Gene replied, shaking the proffered hand. "This here is Detective Inspector Alex Drake."

"Deceased I take it. Sergeant Robert Fraser, Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Charmed to meet you, Sir, Ma'am."

Gene shot Alex a look at the sergeant's comment about being deceased. While the coppers in The Railway Arms were all aware that they were dead, they tended not to draw attention to the fact and it was rarely, if ever, mentioned explicitly.

"Keep your voice down," Gene said roughly.

"Perhaps it will be best if we talk in private, Sergeant Fraser?" Alex suggested rather more diplomatically.

"Perhaps," Robert Fraser allowed. "And please, it's Bob."

"Alright, Bob. What can I get you to drink?"

"A cup of tea would be nice. Or failing that a lemonade."

"Bolly?"

"Do you need to ask?" Alex asked, one eyebrow raised.

"I was trying to be polite. Women," Gene grumbled. He drained the last of his pint and headed to the bar while Alex led Robert to the currently empty card-playing table.

"He calls you Bolly," Robert remarked conversationally after a long silence.

"Yes, yes he does."

"Doesn't that bother you?"

"Not really. I didn't have much say in the matter, to be honest."

Robert frowned. It was a strange nickname and he guessed there was a story behind it. But Gene Hunt seemed a rather tetchy individual, so perhaps that was a line of inquiry best left alone.

"Seems derogatory to me," Robert remarked. "I assume he doesn't use it in front of just anyone."

Alex snorted softly. "I think he'd use it in front of the Queen if informality and brevity became necessary. No one else uses it, but that variant of the name was probably known to most of the police officers at Fenchurch East, and a not insignificant proportion of London's criminals back in the early eighties."

"That variant?" Robert asked, for want of something to say while he digested Hunt's brazen application of a nickname to a D.I..

"Yes." Alex looked thoughtful for a moment. "It's an abbreviation of something he said to me the first day I worked with him. In total there are five variants, I think, including the full version. Bolly's certainly the most common one, and the one that's generally known."

"Hmm... Does it never get tiring?"

Robert had his back to the room so missed Gene's approach with their drinks.

"Does what never get tiring?" he asked, setting down two glasses and a bottle of red wine. "Nelson will bring your tea in a minute," he added before pouring wine for himself and Alex.

"For D.I. Drake to have you always calling her Bolly," Robert explained guilelessly.

"Well, Bolly?"

Alex took a thoughtful sip of her wine. "Not really. Hunt's so crotchety most of the time, the name he used became a useful gage of his temper."

"Sitting right here."

Alex patted his free hand condescendingly, and tilted her head to one side as if remembering. "It was Bolly most of the time, you used my first name or my surname if you were stressed or trying to make a point, sometimes it was to me, sometimes to others. That about covers it. I guess I called you Gene, guv and Hunt with similar implications. Other variants of Bolly were only really used in private conversations, though I'm pretty sure that Ray, Chris, Shaz and Luigi were aware of them."

"Sam, Annie and Nelson too by now, probably."

They sat in uncomfortable silence until Nelson brought the mountie's tea.

"So," Gene started, leaning back in his chair, one hand at the base of his wineglass, "What brings a mountie to visit us of Her Majesty's Constabulary in The Railway Arms?"

"An interesting question, D.C.I. Hunt, and perhaps, more to the point, an interesting perspective."

"Oh, how so?" Gene looked intently at the sergeant and Alex watched carefully, knowing Gene would ask for her opinion later if the sergeant really did have something interesting to say.

"It's about how the world works. Or rather, how the world before this works."

"I repeat. How so?"

"You were responsible for coppers whose lives were, in some way, incomplete?"

"For forty-five years. Hell of a second job." Gene took a good gulp of wine, grateful that in the afterlife, even house rubbish was drinkable.

"So you know that coppers usually get sent back in time to do things right, answer questions that were never answered, or fulfil a potential they either never realised or never got the opportunity to realise."

"Couldn't have put it better meself."

"Did you ever have a copper who had been killed on duty or murdered off duty who had a son or daughter serving in the force at the time of their death?"

Gene thought for a minute and Alex watched both men carefully. Even before he leant forward with his elbows on the table, she could see that Gene was interested. The mountie was harder to read.

"No, I can't say I have."

"I'm not sure that this is even a general rule, because it requires that the other party involved in the critical point in the deceased's life is still around and making waves, but in some cases at least, it can be up to the younger officer to resolve the parent's issues."

"Bloody hell. I wouldn't want to be that younger officer."

"I think my son would agree with you."

"What happened?" Alex asked, giving Gene time to recover, even if his surprise was quickly hidden.

"I was assassinated while investigating the death of a large number of caribou. My son tracked down my killer, got himself exiled to the Canadian consulate in Chicago. After knocking around there for a few years and getting into any number of scrapes, he discovered that he had a younger half-sister and found out the truth about his mother's death. Despite being believed dead for nigh-on twenty years, my wife's murderer reappeared and revealed the low point of my life -- when I'd killed him -- or thought to kill him. Benton, being Benton, not only prevented the world being held to ransom by a white supremacist group with a nuclear submarine, but also brought his mothers murderer in -- properly."

"Let me get this right," Gene said, frowning, "Your son sorted out your problems, resolved your issues. And presumably sorted his own while he was at it."

"That's about the size of it."

"Curious."

"Did he have help?" Alex asked.

"After a fashion, my old partner was still on wilderness duty, but was around often enough, particularly on the sensitive cases." Robert looked into his teacup uncertainly.

"But that wasn't all, was it?" Alex pressed

"No, he was, shall we say, haunted," Robert admitted slowly.

"By a helpful, communicative ghost, I take it?" Gene's voice had an unmistakeable edge to it.

"I'm not sure he saw it that way, but yes, I spoke to him."

"You were right, it is an interesting perspective." Gene leant back in his chair, looking contemplatively at the sergeant opposite him. "I guess your son won't be bothering one of my Canadian counterparts, even if he does get killed on duty."

"I think you're right there, but he might yet." Fraser ran a hand through his hair as he collected his thoughts. "My son and his superior officer couldn't figure themselves out: they could work together as well as any two officers I've ever seen, he adored her, and while he drove her mad, she would have risked much for them to have been more than colleagues. They were equals, but their ranks and duties constrained them. Benton's tendency to become completely tongue tied the minute a conversation gets personal didn't help." He sighed face glum. "Now he's off in the wilderness with Ray -- Kowalski, that is -- and she's just joined the intelligence service."

Neither Alex nor Gene felt that they had anything particular to say so they remained quiet. The similarity to their own situation was difficult to mistake.They drank in comfortable silence for a while, each lost in his own thoughts.

"So, tell me, Sergeant Fraser," Gene said eventually, after topping up his and Alex's glasses, "why did you come to The Railway Arms?"

"Because it seemed right," he answered simply. "Back in Canada I'd figured out about those who help dead coppers sort themselves out. Your name came up a few times, and made me curious. It seems your service was particularly long and particularly dedicated. D. I. Drake's name came up a couple of times too. It seems that there were some questions as to whether she should have actually come here when she did, although, since she seemed contented enough, they quickly stopped. I thought you might appreciate the perspectives."

"I'm not sure I do, to be honest, makes me feel like I might have been redundant after all."

"Please excuse him," Alex said, "he never did learn tact."

"Alex, how many times do I have to tell you, you are not to apologise for me, ever."

Alex dropped her eyes demurely to her glass and murmured 'yes, guv' in an entirely unrepentant tone, and Robert thought he understood what Alex had said about different names carrying different implications a bit better.

"Anyway, I guess that most coppers don't have a son or daughter to sort out their messes or come across their parent's nemesis so they can answer their childhood mysteries while still alive, so my work cannot have been entirely replaceable."

Alex slowly allowed herself to relax.

"Out of curiosity," Gene asked after a few minutes of more or less comfortable silence, "what does Canada's equivalent of The Railway Arms look like?"

"There are two," Fraser said simply. "One's a bit like this, a regular bar -- more a club, really -- in the middle of a city. The other's a wilderness trading post saloon. Half a day from the nearest habitation and almost a week from the nearest town."

"Hmm, I can't say I'm tempted to visit either. How about you, Bolly?"

"The club could be fun, I suppose, although The Railway Arms is certainly more convenient for meeting up with friends, both old and new," she added, spotting the slight tightening around Gene's mouth that said quite clearly that he disagreed with the first part of her statement.

Fraser smiled indulgently. "I can see why you would be unwilling to exchange your comfortable pub for either of Canada's offerings," he said graciously. "It's not really my scene, but this seems to be a comfortable sort of place to come to at the day's end."

"Well, we like it," Gene stated firmly. It was _his_ boozer, after all.

"You know," Fraser said after a long silence in which he finished his cup of tea, and Gene poured both Alex and himself more wine, "There's something important that applies to the two of you as well as to my son. But I don't think you understand it to the extent of being able to articulate it in so many words. When Benton went to Chicago, the largest place he'd worked in was Moose Jaw and he'd transferred out after a few weeks, unable to handle the urban environment."

"Moose Jaw?" Gene asked, just managing to avoid an undignified snigger at the name.

"Yes. Small place, a couple of thousand inhabitants. Benton spent the next thirteen years as a wilderness constable, mostly on his own. And even when he had a partner, it was a temporary affair." He twirled his empty cup before continuing reflectively: "Partnerships, true partnerships, are funny things. Buck Frobisher and I were partners for over twenty years. Benton's had two partners, both called Ray, funnily enough. Benton gets them into trouble, and out of it, too. My point being that partnerships hold no matter who else you're working with, how many miles there are between you, and how many years between meetings. They know the best of you and the worst of you and are always there when you need them."

He gave Gene and Alex an appraising look, amused by the uncertain and confused looks they were giving each other.

"Tell me, how many times has one of you come and found the other, just when they were needed? How many times has the evidence led you think the worst of the other, but you don't want to believe it, and, in the end, you find you were right to trust the other?"

"Often enough," Gene said when Alex simply nodded. "But I shot her..." he added uncertainly.

"Ray Vecchio shot Benton once," Fraser said, "They never got the bullet out. Didn't make their partnership any weaker."

"Sam!" Gene shouted. "Get your lanky, pain in the arse self over here, pronto."

"Guv?"

"Just move it, Gladys."

"What's up?" Sam asked, sitting in an empty seat.

"This is Sergeant Robert Fraser of the Canadian gendarmerie," Gene said brusquely. "He's yattering on about partnerships. Made me realise that Drake and I do you a disservice, sometimes. Drake may be even more annoying than you, but I don't have to feel bad about leaving Annie out," he added by way of apology.

"No worries, guv." Sam raised an eyebrow at Gene's surprised look. "Seven years; you trusting me when you were up on a murder charge," he said simply.

"You coming back in the Johns case."

"Mummy bear," Alex added seemingly irrelevantly, smirking.

"Forgot about that," Gene said, amused almost as much by the confused looks on Sam and Sergeant Fraser's faces as by the memory of Alex's smug tone after she'd whacked the dealer holding a knife to his throat on the head with a piece of iron piping. "A drugs bust where the team codes were three bears; she added a fourth when I had a knife to my throat," he added, seeing Fraser about to ask for some explanation. "All went to shit after though," he continued ruefully, internally amused by the flash of pain that crossed the mountie's face at his profanity.

"I don't want to even start counting the times you came and saved me," Alex said considerably more soberly, draining her glass and reaching for the bottle.

Fraser shifted uncomfortably in his chair. "I think I'd best be off," he said, eventually.

"Yes, well, it was good of you to drop by," Gene said gruffly, standing as the mountie did and holding out his hand.

"Come," Alex said, "I think Sam and Gene need a moment, and we need another bottle."

She walked with the sergeant, and shook his hand sincerely at the door. "Thank you, Sergeant Fraser," she said earnestly. "You were right. We knew what you were saying about partnerships, but Gene has been worrying a bit about leaving Sam out. It's hard, they worked together for longer than he and I, but, as an enemy once said, he and I had a chemistry that it was impossible to deny."

"It was my pleasure, and my honour," Robert Fraser said gallantly. "He must be a difficult man to be close to."

"He is that," Alex admitted with a laugh. "But somehow we get along."

"As I said, partners know the best and worst of each other and stick together regardless, and you are partners in more than one sense." He held out a hand, and she took it firmly. "Take care of him, Detective Inspector Alex Drake," he said simply just before he turned to walk through the door.

"I will," Alex promised quietly as the door swung closed behind the mountie. "Right, wine," she muttered. She made her way to the bar and looked across the pub, watching Gene and Sam sitting with their heads together, deep in discussion, while Nelson uncorked the bottle. "I will," she whispered, recognising again that Gene still wasn't recovered after his long double-duty, and that part of that was the continued reticence between them and their mutual unwillingness to move beyond the boundaries they'd maintained while working together.

"You know, I was wrong," Carol said, appearing at Alex's elbow.

"About what?"

"When I said that he'd walk though Hell for any of us," Carol explained. "His first night here."

Alex looked at her friend quizzically. She'd thought Carol's assessment of Gene had been pretty accurate at the time, and nothing she'd seen or heard since had made her think differently.

"He's gone through Hell for us, and he'd do so again, if he had to, but for most of us he'd only go as far as walking through fire before he stopped to ponder whether there might not be an alternative means of achieving the same end."

"And this is significant because?" Alex asked, a little confused by Carol's somewhat uncharacteristic precise reticence.

"Because the one person he wouldn't stop to question the necessity of going through Hell to save is you," Carol said bluntly. "Cheers Nelson," she added, taking the glass of orange juice that had appeared next to her hand, and sauntering off before Alex could respond.

"Damn you, Gene Hunt," Alex murmured, after a minute or so watching the familiar form. Carol had been right. And she and Gene were still dancing around each other as they had before. Only this time there were no potential professional repercussions.


End file.
